Pat McCartan was Managing Partner of Jones Day from 1993 through 2002 and coordinator of the Firm's litigation practice from 1976 through 1992. In 2003 he became Senior Partner concentrating on appellate litigation and corporate governance matters.
Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, The American Lawyer, The National Law Journal, and every edition of The Best Lawyers in America, Mr. McCartan is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers; and he is an Honorary Overseas Member of the English Commercial Bar Association. Cited in every survey conducted by The National Law Journal as one of America's most respected lawyers, he is also a subject of America's Top Trial Lawyers: Who They Are & Why They Win (Prentice Hall, 1994), a study by legal scholar and author Donald E. Vinson of "consummate courtroom advocates whose reputations are associated with major cases that have had a significant impact on society as a whole."
Clients he has served include: BFGoodrich, BP Exploration, Brush Wellman, Bridgestone/Firestone, The Commissioner of Baseball, General Motors Corporation, The Gillette Company, M.A. Hanna Company, IBM, The Lubrizol Corporation, Maxus Corporation, Mead Corporation, Pfizer, Prudential Securities, RJR Nabisco, Roadway Services, Sherwin-Williams, Texas Instruments, The Timken Company, TRW, Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, Westinghouse Electric Company, The Williams Companies, and the officers and directors of several Fortune 500 companies. He is one of the few lawyers to have enjoined one president of the United States and defended another, having had Jimmy Carter's gasoline tax declared unconstitutional and having successfully defended Ronald Reagan's right to $29 million in federal election funds.
Mr. McCartan has extensive complex case experience on a national basis in areas such as antitrust, taxation, takeovers, officer and director liability, and various kinds of securities and shareholder litigation. He is also active in corporate governance matters and in the product liability and consumer class action areas, having defended mass tort litigation throughout the U.S. and having assisted many manufacturers in fashioning programs to cope with emerging developments in product liability law throughout the world.
Mr. McCartan has served as a member of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States and is currently a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations; the U.S.-Japan Business Council; the Ohio Business Roundtable and the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame, where he served as chairman from 2000 to 2007; The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he chairs the Research and Education Committee; The Greater Cleveland Growth Association, where he served for three years as chairman; and the Kulas Foundation. Awarded the 1998 Torch of Liberty Award by the Anti-Defamation League, and the 2000 ORT Jurisprudence Award, he is also a former president of the Bar Association of Greater Cleveland and served as a member of the Ohio Board of Bar Examiners and the boards of trustees of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and the National Conference of Bar Presidents.
Significant Representations
Mr. McCartan successfully defended The Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. in the multimillion dollar action brought by General Tire & Rubber Co. against all of the nation's tiremakers for infringement of General's oil-extended rubber patents, a case arising out of the government's Rubber Reserve Program during World War II. He was also lead counsel for Firestone in that company's defense of the controversial Radial 500 tire in proceedings before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Congress, and in several class actions throughout the country.
He has served as lead trial counsel for General Motors Corporation in a number of significant cases, starting with his successful defense of GM in several class action and individual cases involving the Corvair automobile. On behalf of GM he negotiated the master agreement with the attorneys general of 46 states to resolve the litigation arising out of the substitution by GM of Chevrolet engines in automobiles manufactured by its Oldsmobile Division, the so-called "Chevymobile" cases. He successfully defended GM in the action instituted by the attorney general of the state of Texas to enjoin GM's nationwide "Cash Bonus" program and in the shareholder derivative litigation against GM and its directors relating to GM's troubled X-car. He was lead counsel for GM in the highly publicized antitrust action brought by Chrysler Corporation to enjoin the GM-Toyota joint venture, served as national coordinating counsel for GM in the litigation pending in several states against the Cadillac Division's modulated displacement V8-6-4 engine, in the litigation instituted by H. Ross Perot against GM and its Electronic Data Systems subsidiary, and in the action brought by the city of Norwood, Ohio over the closing of the GM assembly plant in that city.
Mr. McCartan represented Reliance Electric Company in the specific performance action filed against Exxon Corporation in the District Court for the District of Columbia to require Exxon to pay $1.2 billion to the Reliance shareholders when Exxon's acquisition of Reliance was challenged by the Federal Trade Commission under the antitrust laws. Acting as lead counsel for Marathon Petroleum Company, he obtained an injunction against Mobil Corporation's hostile $6.5 billion tender offer for Marathon in an action filed against Mobil under the federal antitrust laws. He served as lead counsel for Hanna Mining Company in its successful defense of the hostile tender offer launched by Norcen Energy Resources of Canada; for The Gillette Company in resisting Revlon's $4 billion hostile bid in 1986 for the Boston-based manufacturer of personal care products; for Diamond Shamrock in opposing the efforts of Mesa Petroleum and T. Boone Pickens to gain control of Dallas-based Diamond; for Firestone in its successful defense of Pirelli's hostile tender offer after Firestone had entered into a joint venture agreement with Japan's Bridgestone; and for the directors of The Standard Oil Company in connection with British Petroleum's tender offer for the minority interest in Standard Oil.
More recently Mr. McCartan represented TRW in civil and criminal proceedings arising out of the company's government contract business and The Mead Corporation in a series of cases under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). While serving as Jones Day's Managing Partner he limited his appearances primarily to appellate arguments throughout the country, including an appellate practice before the United States Supreme Court. He is also active currently in the corporate governance area and in the representation of corporate officers and directors in a variety of shareholder derivative and securities class actions and internal corporate investigations.
Firm Activities
During his term as head of the Jones Day litigation practice from 1976 through 1992, the practice saw tremendous growth in size. Numbering more than 500 members throughout the Firm, the practice today has responsibility for a docket averaging close to 4,000 matters pending in state and federal courts in more than 25 jurisdictions throughout the U.S. and before international arbitral tribunals in Geneva, London, Stockholm, and The Hague.
As Managing Partner he extended the Firm's geographic reach to Houston, Madrid, Silicon Valley, Milan, Munich, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney and enhanced delivery of the Firm's services through specialized industry practice groups. With more than 2,400 lawyers in 40 offices, Jones Day is one of the largest law firms in the world and acts as principal outside counsel, or provides significant legal representation, for approximately 200 of the 500 largest corporations based in the United States and also serves more than 200 companies based in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
